Robert Parry On Ed Rollins And The $10 Million Payoff To Reagan

With Ed Rollins taking over the Huckabee campaign, it's a good time to remember that Rollins says a Filipino politician told him he'd given the 1984 Reagan campaign $10 million in cash from Ferdinand Marcos. Former AP and Newsweek reporter Robert Parry examines the evidence at his site Consortium News:

The pundits on CNN's "Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer" were unanimous: Republican campaign strategist Ed Rollins was a great guy and his hiring as national chairman for Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign gave it a solid jolt of credibility.

But Blitzer's panel of journalists on Dec. 14 didn't seem to either know or care that Rollins has withheld evidence since 1991 about the identity of a top Filipino politician who admitted delivering an illegal $10 million cash payment to Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign from Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Rollins, who ran Reagan's reelection campaign, mentioned the admission in his 1996 book, Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms, recounting how the Filipino casually asserted over drinks that he had carried the money in a suitcase to a Republican lobbyist who was representing the Reagan campaign.

And Parry has much more on the Marcos-Reagan connection, including indications that Reagan got millions for his 1980 campaign, too.